DR. BETTY: Give yourself permission! Speak to yourself, you’re an adult — not some other adult — speak to the child in you: Kid, I give you permission. None of us likes to be stroke-deficient. We live by strokes. That means taking care of the child in us. My child, your child, likes to play. And sex, of course, is our primary stroke-field. Sex is the best play of all. And the best sex is when two mature adults, who are both nurturing and caring of each other, are also nurturing and caring of their own child-selves, their own kid — and who regard each other as their primary stroke-field. There you have the ultimate recipe for happiness, growth, and creativity. It’s in my book, Dr. Betty’s Favorite Recipe.
Laughter and nods all around — except from the street chicken, who waits until the others leave. He approaches Dr. Betty, motions her to a corner of the lobby. “Yes?” says Dr. Betty brightly.
CHICKEN: Look, Doc. I’m a big fan of yours. I think you’re great. You know your business and you’re good. But I know my business just as well. I can size people up. I know what people want. And believe me, Doc, everybody wants something. I know what you want. You’re a nice person and you deserve it.
DR. BETTY (bantering): And what do I want?
CHICKEN: You want exactly what I’m offering. I know the clerk here. I got a key and the use of a room. Look. Four thirty-seven. It won’t cost either of us a dime. I’m going up now. You wait five minutes and come up the back elevator.
DR. BETTY: This is something else. Talk about acting out! Talk about acting out aggressions to mask little-kid insecurity. Okay, then what happens?
CHICKEN: What happens then, Doc, is that I am going to fuck you as you have never been fucked before. I don’t want to nurture you. I want to fuck you. I’m going to fuck you till your eyeteeth rattle. This is an invitation, Doc. All you got to do now before I leave is say okay, so I don’t waste my time.
DR. BETTY (consulting her wristwatch): Okay.
THE BANAL–LETHAL
SCENE II: A Washington hotel room. It is wartime. Enter Dr. F__, a Nobel Laureate scientist. Taking off his jacket, he sits on the bed wearily, rubs his temples, lies down, and closes his eyes. After a while, he turns on television. The show is a closed-circuit screening of Behind the Green Door, a pornographic film. Presently he masturbates, almost casually, but not before taking the trouble to fetch a special container from his suitcase to catch the ejaculate.
He switches off the television, lies down, closes his eyes.
The telephone rings. With a frown and a curious groan — is it weariness? irritation? anger? — he picks up the receiver. After a moment he hooks up a device, a scrambler, to the phone. We hear only his side of the conversation.
Yes.
Yes, General.
Yes, it was a very long meeting.
I realize that a decision wasn’t reached.
I know it’s important, General.
True, there was no closure in the decision-making process.
Yes, I realize it was a tie vote.
That’s correct — I didn’t express an opinion to the Chiefs.
Yes, that’s true. I have some standing in the scientific community.
Well, thank you, General. It’s nice to know you people respect one scientist.
That’s right, General. It’s no breach of security to call it by name. The eyes-only folder you have — and the only secret is its composition and mode of delivery. It’s a neurotoxin, airborne and water soluble. They’re working on it, too.
For one weapon? Ten million more or less, depending on population density.
Right. It violates no first-strike agreement or Salt III. It’s a weapon, but not an explosive device.
I know that’s a high civilian casualty factor, but it will save lives in the end.
A demonstration? A demonstration of what? How to kill a few hundred reindeer in Siberia? No way, General.
You’re really putting me on the spot, General.
Okay, I’m going to surprise you. I’m going to give you an opinion. I think we got to go with it. For the ultimate good of man. Indeed, in the interests of peace. In fact, why don’t we call it Project Peace?
You like that? Yes, that’s right. Go. You can tell them.
I say go.
After hanging up, he picks up the cylindrical double-walled container, carefully pastes on a sticker containing the address of a California laboratory which collects the sperm of Nobel Laureates for the purpose of inseminating thousands of genetically screened women. Still holding the container, he opens the door, walks rapidly down the corridor to the ice machine.
Question: Do you think the U.S. gene pool and the future quality of life will be improved by the contribution of Dr. F___'s ejaculate?
() Yes
() No
(CHECK ONE)
SCENE III: The following conversation occurs in a momentarily stalled elevator in the Rockefeller Foundation building.
SCIENTIST A (a post-Darwinian evolutionist): All phenomena in the Cosmos can be explained by the scientific laws that govern matter in interaction. This principle applies to the simplest chemical reaction between atoms to the most complex, including the behavior of organisms, the origin of the species, and the ascent of man. Like any other organism, man evolved when mutant forms and functions such as the opposable thumb for tools and weapons, the cortex, and the larynx-pharynx conformation for the language gave him an advantage over other primates in adapting to the environment.
SCIENTIST B (a post-Wallacian evolutionist): Then how do you account for the fact that with the appearance of man there also appeared for the first time in the Cosmos, as far as we know, language, mind, self, and consciousness, and almost immediately thereafter a train of disasters and triumphs which seem to have very little to do with adapting to an environment — such as organized warfare against himself, composing Don Giovanni, Charlie Manson, John Keats, suicide, joy, madness, murder, heroism, modern medicine, child abuse, loving care for the genetically malformed — and in recent years the appearance of the demoniac spirit of the erotic and the violent expressing itself in every conceivable variety of florid sexual behavior which has nothing to do with reproduction or survival of the species, and that with the very rise of science there has occurred the spectacular rise in technological violence, so that more men have been killed in this century than in all others put together — and that finally there should have come to pass the present state of affairs which surpass all belief, not merely that this very “matter” you speak of, which Democritus and Darwin and even Dalton and Boyle saw as peaceable little miniballs of atoms colliding and joining, is in fact possessed of an energy of such an order that one-quarter teaspoon will destroy Greater New York, but that this very secret and this very matter — and here the mind reels — should find itself in the hands of this selfsame demoniac autonomous self, itself a creature of science?
Scientist A opens his mouth to reply, but the elevator doors open at last and there enters a somber-looking Hasidic rabbi, The two scientists exchange glances and fall silent.
Question: How do you think Scientist A would have answered Scientist B?
A Space Odyssey (I). (19) The Self Marooned in the Cosmos: What would you say if you met a man Friday out there? What do you think he would say to you? Could you understand him?